This invention relates in general to a telephone system and, more particularly, to provision of call center capability in a network-based telephone system.
There are organizations which need a telephone system with call center capability. One example of a call center, commonly referred to as an inbound call center, is where the organization has a customer service line with a single publicized telephone number, such that concurrent incoming calls to that common telephone number can arrive on different telephone lines and then need to be allocated among several different telephones each staffed by a respective service representative. Another example of a call center, commonly referred to as an outbound call center, is where the call center automatically places telephone calls to telephone numbers in a list, detects whether each call is answered, and then allocates the answered calls among several telephones each manned by a sales representative.
Techniques for implementing call centers have gone through an evolutionary sequence. Early call centers were standalone, monolithic telephone systems which were completely separate from the standard telephone system, and which had their own call management, as well as their own resources such as trunk lines. An organization using such a call center would thus typically have two physically separate telephone systems, namely the standard system and the call center system. Persons who needed to use the call center would typically have two physically separate telephones on their desk, each coupled to a respective one of the standard telephone system and the call center telephone system.
The second phase of call center evolution was to integrate the call center capability into the call control unit of the standard telephone system, where the standard system was most commonly a private branch exchange (PBX) system. While this allowed integration of the call center capability into the standard telephone system, thereby avoiding the overhead of two entirely separate telephone systems, it also presented some problems. In particular, the development environment for the call center became complex. The developer for the call center needed to know the architecture for the call center software, and also the architecture for the PBX software. The underlying operating system was typically proprietary, and the instruction set and coding language were usually proprietary as well. In addition, a bug introduced into either the call center application or the PBX application could radically affect the workings of the other application.
The lack of separation between the call center and PBX software architectures was particularly problematic for a third party vendor who wished to sell call center capability for use with an existing PBX system. The third party vendor had to learn a separate PBX architecture and operating system for each PBX system for which the third party vendor wished to supply call center capability. In this regard the third party vendor was essentially at the mercy of the PBX manufacturer, and could be seriously affected by PBX bugs over which the vendor had no control. As a practical matter, the most sensible thing for the customer to do was to buy the call center capability from the PBX manufacturer, rather than from a third party vendor. However, this allowed the manufacturer to charge the customer a substantial premium for the inclusion of call center capability, and it reduced but did not eliminate the inherent problems discussed above.
A third step in the evolutionary process was to implement call center capability in the form of a standalone call center unit, which was a standard computer having line and station cards which interfaced it to the PBX through the external public switching telephone network. This had the advantage of providing a standard development environment with a standard operating system (such as one of the operating systems marketed under the trademark WINDOWS by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington). However, there were still a number of disadvantages. One example is that this approach typically required twice as many trunk lines to interface the call center unit to the PBX through the public switching telephone network as to interface the PBX itself to the public switching telephone network, or in other words a total of three times as many truck lines as the PBX system alone. Consequently, this approach was relatively costly, and presented some reliability problems. Further, the call center system could not be easily scaled, for example where a small organization was growing and had a need to expand the capability of its system. A further consideration was that the interface cards were relatively expensive, which contributed to initial system cost as well as expansion cost.
At about the same time, a few first party call control centers were developed, such as dialers in which a standard computer acted as if it was a station and could thus perform some support functions for the user. The support functions included things like address book dialing and automatic fax transmissions. However, this system still required some specific interface hardware which was costly, and which limited the capability to scale the system.
The next stage of evolution was third party control systems, in which a standard computer serving as the call center was interfaced to a special control port in the PBX system. This approach did allow the PBX system and call center to share resources, and made the call center a direct part of the PBX system. However, there were still some drawbacks. For example, this approach was dependent on the PBX manufacturer""s implementation of both the necessary port, and the infrastructure needed to allow the control to take place. Also, several standards for these ports were promulgated formally or informally, but their implementation was both incomplete and inconsistent. Some PBX manufacturers added proprietary extensions to these standards, which caused the resulting interfaces to effectively become various proprietary interfaces, as opposed to equivalent interfaces conforming to a common standard. Further, the additional hardware needed in the PBX system to implement the necessary port increased the overall cost of the PBX system.
All of these prior approaches were basically built around standard telephone systems in which all telephone capability was provided using dedicated telephone lines, whether the standard and call center capabilities were separate or integrated. In recent years, as the use of computers has rapidly expanded in business and in other respects, it has become common to interface computers to each other using a computer network, so that the computers can exchange information. Certain standard network configurations have evolved, one example of which is the Ethernet standard. Information is transferred between the various computers in the form of packets or message units, several of which may need to be sent in order to make up a single message. In order to take advantage of networks of this type, many organizations have supplemented their standard telephone wiring for multiple workstations with a separate system of computer network wiring.
A very recent development is the recognition that the computer network wiring can be used not only to exchange information between computers, but also to implement a network-based PBX system which provides the functionality of a traditional PBX system, but through use of the computer network rather than through a separate configuration of dedicated telephone lines. In this approach, the telephone system and the computers all share the same network. A typical telephone system using such a network might, for example, include one or more telephones which are each coupled to the computer network, a gateway which interfaces the computer network to another computer network or to a public switching telephone network, and a call manager server which is coupled to the network and serves as the unit that controls communications between the various components of the telephone system, including the telephones and the gateway unit.
From the foregoing, it may be appreciated that a need has arisen for a method and apparatus for providing call center capability in a network-based telephone system, while avoiding the disadvantages associated with the traditional call center implementations which have been discussed above.
According to one form of the present invention, an apparatus is provided to meet this need, and includes a unit having a network interface which can be operatively coupled to a network, the unit being operable to provide an automated virtual simulation of a virtual telephone, and to facilitate transmission of telephone call information to and from the virtual telephone through the network interface using network information message units that contain information in a digital format. The unit is further operable to automatically and selectively transmit through the network interface a redirection request in order to facilitate, with respect to message units corresponding to a given telephone call, a substitution of one for the other of the first telephone and a further telephone coupled to the network.
According to another form of the present invention, a method and apparatus are provided and involve: providing a network which has coupled thereto a first telephone usable by a person; effecting an automated virtual simulation of a second telephone coupled to the network; effecting selective automated generation of a redirection request; transmitting telephone call information through the network to and from each of the first and second telephones using information message units that contain digital information representative of the telephone call information, the telephone call information including control information and audio information; and responding to generation of a redirection request by selectively facilitating substitution of one of the first and second telephones for the other thereof with respect to message units corresponding to a given telephone call.